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Cartilage between knees


kristinavb

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Seamus was taken to the Chiropractor after i've been watching him limp for some time. It seemed the limp was going away/getting better when I would take him swimming and eversizing him that way. When he first came to live with me he was probably around 65lbs or so. He was a BIG guy.

 

Now, as of the appt on wednesday he's a much healthier 45.5lbs but could still lose about 5 more.

 

Seamuscomparative.jpg

 

Getting back to the vet... I brought him in for a Chiropractic adjustment and it seemed to help a bit after the vet had me run him around and made adjustments. He said he didn't like how the knee felt when he maipulated and wanted to get an Xray. Long story short Seamus has no cartilage left between his knees.

 

X-Ray:

 

Seamusxray.jpg

 

He's raw fed and i've been adding Chicken feet this past week and he was on Dasuquin before. Is there anything else I can do to help him out? The vet is going to be starting a 6 week course of injections to help try to form some cartilage (i think if I remember correctly.) It's not steroids and it's not an anti-inflamitory. He also wants to start a more beefed up supplement.

 

Help?

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First of all - let me express my admiration for all you've been doing for Seamus!

 

Is it Adequan that the vet is going to start giving him? Adequan rules.... In addition to helping re-grow cartilage, it also does provide some analgesic effect (pain relief). I think you do have to be careful, though, with also using steroids (like prednisone).

 

If that's what he's on (and I STRONGLY recommend it), don't be put off by the "giving of shots". I'm needle-phobic but DH gives our dog the shots himself. Saves lots of $ and time in getting to the vet's. At this point our dog is down to shots once a month. The vials seem expensive the first time you order them, but when you're down to one shot per month, it costs relatively little and does a world of good.

 

Keep up with the weight loss. Keep up with the Dasuquin (with MSM?) as well. Consider adding fish oil (not cod liver oil) in addition.

 

Best of luck!!!

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If it's Adequan most vets will show you have to give it. The recommendation is to give it IM, but I have a friend who has used it successfully by giving it SQ, so if you're squeamish about injecting into a muscle, you can probably manage just fine injecting under the skin.

 

J.

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I'm not exactly sure what the supplement or the shots are called. Tomorrow i'll write everything down and go from there as that's our first shot.

 

Yes the Dasuquin was with MSM. I've added 2 fish oil pills (about 700mg or so of DHA) to his diet daily since he's been here as well as 400IU of vit. E

 

Yes, he's been quite full of surprise issues, but I love the little tard.

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I'm currently giving more fish oil than that, per Liz P's suggestion. (Both the ortho vet and the rehab vet have also recommended a LOT of fish oil). I'm giving three capsules per day, about to work it up to four 1,200 mg capsules per day, for a 45-lb dog (yes, 4,800 mg/d). I buy them from CVS pharmacy; I got the ones that had had mercury removed. (As a lot of oily fish are pretty high in mercury content, and as a fair amount of dimethylmercury can accumulate in fat, I felt this was worth seeking out).

 

I'll second the sub-Q on the Adequan; I've heard that it works well that way. (DH has experience with IM shots, though, so he gives it that way). Seriously, you can save yourself a fortune by giving the shots yourself. To wit: my ortho vet wanted to charge me about $45 per shot for it. If we gave it ourselves, it was more like $10 per shot. At first we were giving it twice a week, later tapering off to once a month.

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I'm currently giving more fish oil than that, per Liz P's suggestion. (Both the ortho vet and the rehab vet have also recommended a LOT of fish oil). I'm giving three capsules per day, about to work it up to four 1,200 mg capsules per day, for a 45-lb dog (yes, 4,800 mg/d).

 

 

Goodness that's a LOT of fish oil! We buy ours at CVS/Walgreens too. Incredible price difference compared to the grocery store... Do you notice a difference with the higher amount of mg?

 

To wit: my ortho vet wanted to charge me about $45 per shot for it. If we gave it ourselves, it was more like $10 per shot. At first we were giving it twice a week, later tapering off to once a month.

 

That's a big difference! I'm not at all needle shy and wouldn't mind doing it myself... Our vet wants to charge around $30 a shot for them... I'll get the name and see if I can get them myself.

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I've done Adequan both IM and SQ. SQ was less mentally traumatic for me, but dog didn't seem to mind either way usually. (one exception...)

I didn't notice tremendous improvement with it, but we're battling things on a number of fronts, so dunno. I second the high fish-oil dose. Another possibility to check with your vet about is Hyaflex (some controversy if oral is worth it, as injectable seems to have more readily-absorbed effects....but my pain-management vet swears by it...it surely can't hurt!) as well as Boswellia. Latter is a somewhat non-traditional supplement - made by Standard Process/Medi-Herb; I've seen more good effects with that than most everything else. (All of my experience is for treating arthritis - but I think the principles are about the same....).

 

Good luck to you and Seamus!

 

diane

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Goodness that's a LOT of fish oil! We buy ours at CVS/Walgreens too. Incredible price difference compared to the grocery store... Do you notice a difference with the higher amount of mg?

 

Here's the thread with the dosages for the fish oil.

 

We've only recently started at the higher dose. I was a bit leery about going from 540 mg/d to 4,800 mg/d overnight, so we've been adding one capsule per week.

 

Do I notice a difference? well, I haven't noticed any fish breath. And his digestion is fine. Are his symptoms any better? I think they are, but it's hard to pinpoint cause and effect because we're doing a variety of different things - it's not a controlled experiment. Early in the spring he'd limp if I let him run in the stream for five minutes, but more recently he's worked his way up to half an hour of streamrunning with no ill-effect. Probably what's helping most (for his hip dysplasia) is exercise, Adequan, Dasuquin, and fish oil, not necessarily in this order. (We were doing acupuncture but seem to have fallen out of that). I'm not sure what your vet will recommend about exercise for Seamus if he really has so little cartilage in his knees.

 

Does he swim? That's a great form of exercise. Last summer Duncan wouldn't swim, he'd only wade. He finally learned how to swim this summer, and now he's a total water rat (especially if someone is throwing a frisbee, ball, or stick in the water for him to fetch).

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Yes he swims. The woman who owned him from puppyhood said he absolutely hated water and would never even get near it but he loves the water so not sure what happened there... We've been swimming at the lake for the past 3 weeks about 3x a week. We also have a pool in the backyard so he's been in that since he's arrived. The vet wants me to use this as our pretty much exclusive form of serious exercising.

 

Are you talking about total mg of fish oil or DHA/EPA (omega 3?) Because if you're talking total fish oil Seamus has been on about 2000mg a day since the beginning, doubling that up shouldn't be too much of a problem. Hopefully this will all help him out as I really don't want him to be lame by 5 years old (for his sanity and my own.)

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Yes he swims. The woman who owned him from puppyhood said he absolutely hated water and would never even get near it but he loves the water so not sure what happened there... We've been swimming at the lake for the past 3 weeks about 3x a week. We also have a pool in the backyard so he's been in that since he's arrived. The vet wants me to use this as our pretty much exclusive form of serious exercising.

 

Are you talking about total mg of fish oil or DHA/EPA (omega 3?) Because if you're talking total fish oil Seamus has been on about 2000mg a day since the beginning, doubling that up shouldn't be too much of a problem. Hopefully this will all help him out as I really don't want him to be lame by 5 years old (for his sanity and my own.)

 

Sorry - I wasn't paying enough attention to details. The dosages are, I think (Liz P?) for fish oil, not DHA/EPA. The CVS bottle I have claims each 1,200 mg tablet contains 360 mg of total omega-3 fatty acids. I'm giving three capsules now, will switch to four this weekend, so that'll total 1440 mg of total omega-3 fatty acids per day. And as I was giving him two Welactin tablets before, that amounted to 540 mg of total omega-3 fatty acids, not 540 mg of fish oil. Apples and oranges. Thanks for calling this to everyone's attention!

 

It's wonderful that you're lucky enough to have your own pool! I know you've been working hard to get weight off Seamus ever since you got him; it's great that the vet still approves of this form of exercise for him. I'm taking care of my FIL at his summer place on a lake at the moment. Duncan thinks we should move here permanently. He doesn't understand how anyone could possibly want to sleep past dawn when there's this LAKE at our doorstep!

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Thanks for the clarification :rolleyes:

 

Our appt is in about an hr and i've been reading up on this Adequan. I'm impressed so far... I just hope it will be effective with a dog who has no cartilage left as opposed to a dog who still has at least some left between it's joints. I'm going to ask the vet about this and about which supplement he wants Seamus to be on instead of Dasuquin.

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